Army Acquisition

The Army's new Heavy Equipment Transporter System (HETS) consists of a tractor and semitrailer designed to transport tanks and other heavy equipment. The Army's justification for expanding the HETS transportation company's mission and increasing HETS quantity requirements appears adequate. An Army analysis showed that achieving the expanded mission would yield substantial cost savings. The new HETS, however, had not met its contractually required reliability and maintainability levels, and a current test will not conclusively prove compliance with those requirements. Also, the HETS has not shown that it can adequately accomplish its mission or that it is suitable for fielding. Moreover, the new system has a safety problem caused by the semitrailer's tendency to veer into the other lane on turns and curves. The new HETS contract originally contained language that embodies the spirit of the Defense Department's fly-before-buy policy. The Army, however, conditionally accepted deliveries of HETS before contractual reliability and maintenance requirements had been demonstrated.

GAO found that: (1) the Army has cited improved operational effectiveness and substantial cost savings to support its decision to expand the HETS mission; (2) the HETS tractor and semitrailer have not met their contractual reliability and maintainability requirements during Army production quality testing; (3) the Army believes that most tractor problems are associated with the contractor's assembly practices or quality problems with individual subcontractors; (4) the Army has not adequately justified a reduced production quality test that relieves the contractors of the cost to correct any system failure that might occur after 8,000 miles; (5) HETS has not adequately demonstrated its capability to accomplish its mission or its suitability for fielding because the mission profile run in the operational test was less rigorous than required; and (6) as of March 31, 1993, HETS has been involved in 14 safety incidents during testing attributable to the semitrailer's tendency to veer into other lanes.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

Director: Team: Phone: